On an apprenticeship as a publisher Schumann studied from 1951 at the University of Bonn Indology, religious studies and ethnology. In 1957 he earned his doctorate at the University of Bonn in Gustav Mensching with an investigation on the meaning and significance of the term development Samkhara in early Buddhism. In 1960 he went to the German Academic Exchange Service as a lecturer in the German language to India at the Hindu University in Benares. From 1988 until his retirement in 1993 Schumann was German Consul General in Bombay. Schumann was awarded the Rabindranath Tagore Literature Award.